Do you have the empty-handed skills to get to your gun? This store owner sure needed them to protect himself from the knife attack in this video, though eventually he is able to get to it and fend the attacker off. This is why we talk about having skills beyond gun skills at Active Self Protection!

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In any territorial or predatorial violence, the attacker gets to set the time and circumstances of the attack. This knife attack came out of nowhere for sure! They will almost always launch that attack from ambush, or as we like to call it in Umas, from “obscurity.” Surviving that ambush is one of the most important keys to successfully defending yourself.

Spiritual fitness is an important part of Active Self Protection. You don’t often get any advance notice of the last day of your life, but we see over and over that self-defense isn’t a guarantee of winning every fight you might be placed in. You want to be at peace with your loved ones and with God, because you’ll need that peace on the day that you meet Him. Since you can’t guarantee advanced notice, make peace today. This knife attack grievously wounded multiple people, and the first guy and the second guy could easily have died.

Empty-handed skills are absolutely critical for self-defenders, especially against a knife attack. First of all, more conflicts you will encounter as a self-defender will require empty-handed skills than will require firearms skills, simply because more self-defense encounters are physical than deadly. Second, since a firearm is a tool of last resort, self-defenders need to have non-lethal options that include empty-handed skills to protect themselves from likely incidents. Third, in the moment of the encounter you may not have the time to get to your gun before you can fight your way to it.

A knife attack does not happen like you’ve seen in Hollywood. Instead it is brutal, fast, and mean. Stabbing attacks do not generally come from slashes or from any notice whatsoever, but tend to come from concealment and repeatedly stab at a rate of 2-3 stabs per second. That’s what you have to defend against.

First aid skills are important, especially against a knife attack because you WILL be cut. If you’re going to train and prepare to take a life to defend yourself, you should also have skills, training, and equipment to save life should you need to. (I carry this at a minimum: http://amzn.to/1XTP0kN) Often that will not involve defensive encounters, and in a defensive encounter your primary responsibility is to yourself and your loved ones.

Keep your firearm ready to fire. Some people carry their firearm with an empty chamber, but doing so is not recommended for several reasons. First, it assumes that you will have both hands available to you to draw your firearm, which isn’t necessarily the case. You might have a hand engaged or injured. Secondly, it assumes that you’ll have time to chamber a round in a gunfight, but gunfights are won and lost on tenths of seconds. Third, it assumes that you’ll have the dexterity to chamber a round under duress, though in the moment many times I have seen people fumble their chambering attempt. Keep your defensive firearm ready to fire, with a round in the chamber! In this knife attack it worked out okay, but he easily could have been injured enough not to be able to use that hand.

Keep your firearm on your person! Plenty of people keep a firearm stationed near them under the counter or on a desk, but in the moment of need like this knife attack you can’t ever be sure that you can get to it if it’s not on your person. So keep your force multiplier with you at all times.

Attitude. Skills. Plan.

(music in the intro and outro courtesy of Bensound at http://www.bensound.com)

Most things written about self defense are poorly-written and not very useful. This one stands well out of the pack by being very well written and informative. I’ve been studying self defense since 1974, I have a few books and many magazine articles published on self defense and pragmatic martial arts, and I’m an NRA certified pistol instructor, so I know the subject well, and recognize a good source when I see one.